Foreword

Foreword

TWELVE years had passed since I had laid the body of my
great-uncle, Captain John Carter, of Virginia, away from
the sight of men in that strange mausoleum in the old
cemetery at Richmond.

Often had I pondered on the odd instructions he had left me
governing the construction of his mighty tomb, and especially
those parts which directed that he be laid in an OPEN casket
and that the ponderous mechanism which controlled the bolts
of the vault's huge door be accessible ONLY FROM THE INSIDE.

Twelve years had passed since I had read the remarkable
manuscript of this remarkable man; this man who remembered
no childhood and who could not even offer a vague guess as
to his age; who was always young and yet who had dandled my
grandfather's great-grandfather upon his knee; this man who
had spent ten years upon the planet Mars; who had fought for
the green men of Barsoom and fought against them; who had
fought for and against the red men and who had won the ever
beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, for his wife, and
for nearly ten years had been a prince of the house of Tardos
Mors, Jeddak of Helium.

Twelve years had passed since his body had been found upon
the bluff before his cottage overlooking the Hudson, and oft-
times during these long years I had wondered if John Carter
were really dead, or if he again roamed the dead sea bottoms
of that dying planet; if he had returned to Barsoom to find that
he had opened the frowning portals of the mighty atmosphere plant in
time to save the countless millions who were dying of asphyxiation
on that far-gone day that had seen him hurtled ruthlessly through
forty-eight million miles of space back to Earth once more.
I had wondered if he had found his black-haired Princess and the
slender son he had dreamed was with her in the royal gardens of
Tardos Mors, awaiting his return.

Or, had he found that he had been too late, and thus gone back to a
living death upon a dead world? Or was he really dead after all,
never to return either to his mother Earth or his beloved Mars?

Thus was I lost in useless speculation one sultry August
evening when old Ben, my body servant, handed me a telegram.
Tearing it open I read:

'Meet me to-morrow hotel Raleigh Richmond.

'JOHN CARTER'

Early the next morning I took the first train for Richmond
and within two hours was being ushered into the room occupied
by John Carter.

As I entered he rose to greet me, his old-time cordial
smile of welcome lighting his handsome face. Apparently he
had not aged a minute, but was still the straight, clean-limbed
fighting-man of thirty. His keen grey eyes were undimmed, and
the only lines upon his face were the lines of iron character and
determination that always had been there since first I remembered him,
nearly thirty-five years before.

'Well, nephew,' he greeted me, 'do you feel as though you
were seeing a ghost, or suffering from the effects of too many
of Uncle Ben's juleps?'

'Juleps, I reckon,' I replied, 'for I certainly feel mighty good;
but maybe it's just the sight of you again that affects me. You
have been back to Mars? Tell me. And Dejah Thoris? You
found her well and awaiting you?'

'Yes, I have been to Barsoom again, and--but it's a long
story, too long to tell in the limited time I have before I must
return. I have learned the secret, nephew, and I may traverse
the trackless void at my will, coming and going between the
countless planets as I list; but my heart is always in Barsoom,
and while it is there in the keeping of my Martian Princess, I
doubt that I shall ever again leave the dying world that is my life.

'I have come now because my affection for you prompted me
to see you once more before you pass over for ever into that
other life that I shall never know, and which though I have
died thrice and shall die again to-night, as you know death, I
am as unable to fathom as are you.

'Even the wise and mysterious therns of Barsoom, that
ancient cult which for countless ages has been credited with
holding the secret of life and death in their impregnable
fastnesses upon the hither slopes of the Mountains of Otz, are as
ignorant as we. I have proved it, though I near lost my life in
the doing of it; but you shall read it all in the notes I have been
making during the last three months that I have been back upon Earth.'

He patted a swelling portfolio that lay on the table at his elbow.

'I know that you are interested and that you believe, and I
know that the world, too, is interested, though they will not
believe for many years; yes, for many ages, since they cannot
understand. Earth men have not yet progressed to a point where
they can comprehend the things that I have written in those notes.

'Give them what you wish of it, what you think will not
harm them, but do not feel aggrieved if they laugh at you.'

That night I walked down to the cemetery with him. At the
door of his vault he turned and pressed my hand.

'Good-bye, nephew,' he said. 'I may never see you again,
for I doubt that I can ever bring myself to leave my wife and
boy while they live, and the span of life upon Barsoom is often
more than a thousand years.'

He entered the vault. The great door swung slowly to. The
ponderous bolts grated into place. The lock clicked. I have
never seen Captain John Carter, of Virginia, since.

But here is the story of his return to Mars on that other occasion,
as I have gleaned it from the great mass of notes which he left
for me upon the table of his room in the hotel at Richmond.

There is much which I have left out; much which I have not
dared to tell; but you will find the story of his second search
for Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, even more remarkable
than was his first manuscript which I gave to an unbelieving
world a short time since and through which we followed the
fighting Virginian across dead sea bottoms under the moons of Mars.